A bilateral hearing implant system has a left side and a right side. Left and right side filter bank pre-processors preprocess left and right microphone signals to generate band pass signals for each side. A bilateral signal processing arrangement processes the band pass signals in a time sequence of stimulation frames. The signal processing module includes a bilateral channel selection module synchronously selects for each stimulation frame a set of stimulation channels for each side based on spectral content of the band pass signals. Left and right side signal processing submodules process for each stimulation frame a limited subset of each side band pass signals corresponding to the selected stimulation channels to generate electrical stimulation signals.